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Where are all those price cuts thanks to AI implementation m (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

63 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So many companies cut their workforce as much as 10-15% citing that those jobs can be fully automated by the use of AI but I am still waiting to see any meaningful price cuts of their products from the said companies, etc.

Otherwise this will mean that they are doing this just to increase their profit margins and please their shareholders and don't care about their customers or workforce.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (2 children)

If you were to follow Adam Smith to the letter, it will Eventually® get cheaper: lower production cost leads to increased supply, and unemployment leads to decreased demand. Both forcing the prices down.

In practice, though, there are at least two problems with this reasoning:

The hand of the market has Parkinson's. Sure, it might "eventually" put things in place, but before that the hand will keep shaking things up and down, while people still need to live.
Smithsonian supply and demand assumes an infinitely competitive free market. There's none - and specially not in this current situation, where you got oligopolies everywhere, and plenty services+goods have huge natural costs of entry.

In those situations I'd simply ditch Smith and look at Marx instead.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

This. The invisible hand doesn't work if monopolists buy control of all the fingers.

I think Smith would probably prefer playing ball with Marx over whatever this hellscape is

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Got any book recommendations on this topic?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Cowbee already answered it. But really - I recommend going straight to the sources: The Wealth of Nations and The Capital. Preferably in annotated versions, specially for Marx as it's a bit harder to digest (sadly I can't recommend a specific one as I didn't read either book in English).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Capital. It's the biggest and best for a reason.

If that's too daunting, read Wage Labor and Capital as well as Value, Price, and Profit. Both combined are far shorter than 1 volume of Capital.